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XvReaperXv wrote:and you can take 3 wraithknights for one LOS, when you only need 1 to kill it.

Look Out Sir or Line of Site? I don't get it.

Akiasura wrote:
Relative ease thanks to sonic equipment...?
It's...it's a small blast template. It scores 1-2 hits per turn. On a unit that is prohibitively expensive and slow.

And that 5 man scat bike squad can inflict ~5 wounds, and wipe the min squad of noise marines. Chaos has no real answer to Eldar. The supplements have made them stronger, just not enough where they can compete with the big boys.

Any slanneshi CSM player worth his salt packs atleast 2-3 blast-masters in separate squads which with 48 range guarantee's to out range eldar scatter-bikes, not only that but although being a small blast is likely to hit at least 2 to 3 of the bikes, with Str 8, ap 3 ignore cover, the bikes are as about as dead as can be. And we are just talking in one turn.

Reavas wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
Relative ease thanks to sonic equipment...?
It's...it's a small blast template. It scores 1-2 hits per turn. On a unit that is prohibitively expensive and slow.

And that 5 man scat bike squad can inflict ~5 wounds, and wipe the min squad of noise marines. Chaos has no real answer to Eldar. The supplements have made them stronger, just not enough where they can compete with the big boys.

Any slanneshi CSM player worth his salt packs atleast 2-3 blast-masters in separate squads which with 48 range guarantee's to out range eldar scatter-bikes, not only that but although being a small blast is likely to hit at least 2 to 3 of the bikes, with Str 8, ap 3 ignore cover, the bikes are as about as dead as can be. And we are just talking in one turn.

How much does a Blast master cost? Plus a Rhino for cover or some sort of survivability.

Eldar can bring out Scatt lasers for pretty darn cheap compared to that, plus they're more mobile than your Blastmasters. Oh, and throw on Invuln saves on the squad with a Farseer. Now your AP 3 means squat.

It's hard to outrange 36" guns on a board with decent terrain.

Martel732 wrote:
It's hard to outrange 36" guns on a board with decent terrain.

Exactly. Bikes aren't hard to hide behind terrain, and then they get a 12" move plus 36" range.

Akiasura wrote:
Relative ease thanks to sonic equipment...?
It's...it's a small blast template. It scores 1-2 hits per turn. On a unit that is prohibitively expensive and slow.

And that 5 man scat bike squad can inflict ~5 wounds, and wipe the min squad of noise marines. Chaos has no real answer to Eldar. The supplements have made them stronger, just not enough where they can compete with the big boys.

We have an answer, a few well placed helldrakes and some really lucky dice rolls

Just remember that if you really think Noise Marines are that good at killing Bikers, Legion Of The Damned do it MUCH better and nobody is using them.

Reavas wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
Relative ease thanks to sonic equipment...?
It's...it's a small blast template. It scores 1-2 hits per turn. On a unit that is prohibitively expensive and slow.

And that 5 man scat bike squad can inflict ~5 wounds, and wipe the min squad of noise marines. Chaos has no real answer to Eldar. The supplements have made them stronger, just not enough where they can compete with the big boys.

Any slanneshi CSM player worth his salt packs

Great start

Reavas wrote:

atleast 2-3 blast-masters in separate squads

2-3? I usually take 5-6 between the army. It's the only reason to take them at all.

Reavas wrote:

which with 48 range guarantee's to out range eldar scatter-bikes

For someone throwing "worth his salt" comments you don't seem to understand certain things about the game.
The blaster is a heavy weapon, essentially. You can't move. This means the weapon has a 48" range, since moving it makes you fire with the horrible profile that isn't worth the points.
The scatbike is on a jetbike that can move anywhere within 12" and move back 2d6 in the assault phase. The guns are 36". They essentially have a range of 48" plus can move back to safety (cover or out of LoS) and move to better firing positions.
The scatbikes equal or exceed the range of the blastmaster due to superior mobility. Heavy on an infantry weapon is a death sentence.

Reavas wrote:

not only that but although being a small blast is likely to hit at least 2 to 3 of the bikes,

No, a small blast is 3". Unit coherency demands 2". A scatbike squad spread out is never going to get 3 bikes tagged. A large blast, a ~5" template, gets 3-4 bikes, sometimes 5 on rare occasions. A small one never gets 3 unless your opponent got lazy. Realistically, it's 1-2.
You're also ignoring the fact that the scatbikes can deploy out of LoS and fire first. Due to superior mobility, they get to dictate the terms of engagement, and its not hard to wipe out a squad of noise marines unless they take a rhino.

Reavas wrote:

with Str 8, ap 3 ignore cover, the bikes are as about as dead as can be. And we are just talking in one turn.

1-2 bikes is not as dead as dead can be, especially on a fragile platform. Let's compare point costs.
A noise marine squad is best taken as a squad of ten to reduce the cost of the rhino and useless champion per model.
170 for the squad
60 for the blast masters (2).
10 champion.
35 Rhino.
275 points for the squad. That's 140 points per blastmaster, nice! For the record, a scatbike pays 27 points total and, while not as good as the blastmaster per model, but at 5:1....

For the record, a 5 man squad with rhino is more expensive per model. You can not take the rhino, but it becomes very easy to kill the marines and they can't redeploy well, losing a turn of firing pretty easily.

For the eldar, 275 points will get you 10 scat bikes. Let's compare!
2 blastmasters average 2-4 hits assuming no bad scatter. Let's go with 3. After that, its ~2.5 wounds assuming no powers. You are killing ~55-80 points per turn, and will need 4-5 turns to earn your points back. That's pretty bad. We can double that, assuming all perfect scatters getting 3 hits each and your opponent not deploying well, and get 5 wounds, which is 2-3 turns to earn your points back. This is much better, but extremely unlikely.
Most eldar lists that are semi-competitive run 20+ bikes. It would take 4 blastmasters all game, a 500 pt investment, to kill them. 8 blastmasters, which is half the army, would do the deed by turn 3. This is assuming the eldar sit there and let you do it.

For the eldar, 1 scat bike does the following
2/3 * 5/6 * 1/3 = 10/54 per shot, 6 shots. A little over 1 dead marine per bike (~1.1), with the average cost of the marine being 27.5 points (as much as the scat bike!) if you break it up per model. It takes one turn for the scat bike to earn more than its points back on average. This is excellent.

So the 270 points of eldar kill over 240 points worth of troops in one turn. That's...that's amazing. And most eldar take about 500 points in scat bikes if its competitive. They can easily delete 500 points of noise marines in one turn.

Such Relative ease
Sonic blasters are a good answer to WG, not scatbikes. If you can pop their transport open, which is doable. Scatbikes just hose down everything we have. The WK adds to that. Those two units alone means chaos can't compete currently. Believe me, I've been asking for a BR against a competitive eldar list involving chaos forever, and no one has delivered. Not once.

Table wrote:


I think what Jan is trying to impart is less about math and more about attitude. Its that you can join in the internet chorus and mantra of crying about Eldar and Riptides and how every game has three wraith knights and is all scattterbikes and objectives mean nothing along with narrative play.
Im not going to say the dirty 3 are not infact, over the top. Its clear they are.. But you can either bitch and moan like a sop or actually try to work with what you have. CSM isnt the bottom boy anymore. Traitors hate has helped out more than your local power gamer would like to admit. It may not be lolwraith knight level, but its clearly capable of holding its own against most other armies. The Codex still has major issues and we wont see a solution till mid 8th. But until then you can either work with what we have, or take your ball and go home. No sense doing anything else.

But I do have to say. I cant see how the murder sword is anything but junk. In any build. But id sure like to be shown differently.

Murder Sword isn't very good in comparison to the better options available to Chaos but its not without any merit. I think you just end up looking at it and going "or I could take X...". Your eyes kind of slide off the page a little bit when you read it.

As for my message, you are precisely right about that. The hyperbole that surrounds this codex is so ridiculously negative that any reasoning person shouldn't buy into it. The level of despair people act like they have (and maybe for some it's even true, but its more the mob mentality speaking than reality) is not supported by my own experience. In other words, how is it that someone can win consistently with the same codex and it be the codex's fault? I'm just saying. This comes up on so many codex's and people want it to be GW's fault they are losing. Well i am sure GW isn't entire guiltless in the matter but if someone wants me to buy off that its all GW, and not just the Generals being inflexible, I'm sorry. I just can't get behind it.

At some point, some personal responsibility for wins and losses needs to happen. I tire quickly of people who want it to be about anything but them. That's a personal point of view I will always have. I am not here to lie to you all and tell you that there aren't codex's which make your choices easier and more prolific. I am telling you that there are plenty of combinations thanks to the Black Legion and Traitors hate supplement that should positively give a capable general all he needs towin.

No one wins all the time. No one. Dice are involved. Terrain is involved. The opponent is just as interested as you are in winning so there's his involvement and skill. Ultimately though, good generals win more often than worse ones and that happens no matter the codex. I've stomped the last four Eldar players i faced. All of them. i used Dark Eldar and did it. I used Tau Empire and did it. I used Night Lords and did it twice. This is why I do not like this kind of talk. It's B.S.

The Eldar are a powerhouse butthey have stats like everyone else and you can kill them like everyone else. So choose your tools wisely (yes...perhaps more wisely than other codex's force you to) and be smarter than you normally have to be playing those other armies and you will come out ahead more often than you don't. as you should, if you're the better general. Every now and again, you'll lose. Every now and again, you'll lose big. So what. you'll win more often than you lose if you play your A game. And if you don'd want to "have to" play your A game, stop playing War games! What are you (the global you) even doing playing if all you want is to coast down the hill every game?

Although the maths look pretty dire for the slaanesh marines, I don't think you can look at the 'average cost of the marine' per turn.

Most of the time it will be bolter marines dieing, which you've not even bothered to do the maths for as we know they won't accomplish much.

However, for the eldar, each wound taken represents a substantial drop in firepower.

On top of this, the first scat bike squad is essentially a throw away round of shooting; it destroys the rhino, but accomplishes little else... it might not even do that with cover/smokes and night fighting, which means another unit of scat bikes shooting wasted on a rhino.

That said, jetbikes might initially seem good targets for sonic weapons, but jet bikes do play against some of the strengths of noise marines. Most obviously, they are bikes so can't be pinned, which is one of the ways noise marine armies a) control the damage they take and b) get their non-grenade wielding combat specialists into combat striking at initiative order.

On top of that scatbikes are simply more points efficient at grinding down units, as shown by the poster above above.

Scattrbikes are frighteningly good. Hiding from them until the Heldrakes arrive is never a bad plan.

 Jancoran wrote:
I was right about how negative you would be.

That's not an epic prediction, really.

Addendum: you never have told me what's "good" in the BA codex.

 Jancoran wrote:

Table wrote:


I think what Jan is trying to impart is less about math and more about attitude. Its that you can join in the internet chorus and mantra of crying about Eldar and Riptides and how every game has three wraith knights and is all scattterbikes and objectives mean nothing along with narrative play.
Im not going to say the dirty 3 are not infact, over the top. Its clear they are.. But you can either bitch and moan like a sop or actually try to work with what you have. CSM isnt the bottom boy anymore. Traitors hate has helped out more than your local power gamer would like to admit. It may not be lolwraith knight level, but its clearly capable of holding its own against most other armies. The Codex still has major issues and we wont see a solution till mid 8th. But until then you can either work with what we have, or take your ball and go home. No sense doing anything else.

But I do have to say. I cant see how the murder sword is anything but junk. In any build. But id sure like to be shown differently.

Murder Sword isn't very good in comparison to the better options available to Chaos but its not without any merit. I think you just end up looking at it and going "or I could take X...". Your eyes kind of slide off the page a little bit when you read it.

As for my message, you are precisely right about that. The hyperbole that surrounds this codex is so ridiculously negative that any reasoning person shouldn't buy into it. The level of despair people act like they have (and maybe for some it's even true, but its more the mob mentality speaking than reality) is not supported by my own experience. In other words, how is it that someone can win consistently with the same codex and it be the codex's fault? I'm just saying. This comes up on so many codex's and people want it to be GW's fault they are losing. Well i am sure GW isn't entire guiltless in the matter but if someone wants me to buy off that its all GW, and not just the Generals being inflexible, I'm sorry. I just can't get behind it.

At some point, some personal responsibility for wins and losses needs to happen. I tire quickly of people who want it to be about anything but them. That's a personal point of view I will always have. I am not here to lie to you all and tell you that there aren't codex's which make your choices easier and more prolific. I am telling you that there are plenty of combinations thanks to the Black Legion and Traitors hate supplement that should positively give a capable general all he needs towin.

No one wins all the time. No one. Dice are involved. Terrain is involved. The opponent is just as interested as you are in winning so there's his involvement and skill. Ultimately though, good generals win more often than worse ones and that happens no matter the codex. I've stomped the last four Eldar players i faced. All of them. i used Dark Eldar and did it. I used Tau Empire and did it. I used Night Lords and did it twice. This is why I do not like this kind of talk. It's B.S.

The Eldar are a powerhouse butthey have stats like everyone else and you can kill them like everyone else. So choose your tools wisely (yes...perhaps more wisely than other codex's force you to) and be smarter than you normally have to be playing those other armies and you will come out ahead more often than you don't. as you should, if you're the better general. Every now and again, you'll lose. Every now and again, you'll lose big. So what. you'll win more often than you lose if you play your A game. And if you don'd want to "have to" play your A game, stop playing War games! What are you (the global you) even doing playing if all you want is to coast down the hill every game?

This is literally the worst L2P argument I've seen in awhile, and I can't wait to respond to it when I get to my computer.

nareik wrote:
Although the maths look pretty dire for the slaanesh marines, I don't think you can look at the 'average cost of the marine' per turn.

I'll admit that it's not the best way to do it, but its hard to determine when the blastmaster marines will actually die since the scatbikes can move around a bit and get angles.
Since equivalent points in scatbikes one rounds the entire unit, I found this to be a non-issue. If I kill the whole squad, it doesn't matter when the blastmaster dies, and ten scat bikes will kill 11 marines on average.

I mainly did it to determine PPM. It's pretty standard practice when doing these comparisons for tactical marines since you don't know when the PG guy will die, but he's roughly double a basic marine. You just assume he brings the pppm up a bit. Transports its different since they have their own HP and defenses. Otherwise 8 bikes earn half their points and the last 2 bikes earn double their points. It averages out the same.

nareik wrote:

Most of the time it will be bolter marines dieing, which you've not even bothered to do the maths for as we know they won't accomplish much.

I didn't do the math since they'll never be in range. The scat bikes shot 36 and move 2d6 away. If the slaanesh troops move they can't fire the heavy weapon.
They will literally do nothing, which is why they were not included. The bolter marines only come in to play against melee armies, which hardly includes eldar. I wish the sonic weapons had a similar range even if it was one shot, but chaos is filled with this kind of thing all over.

nareik wrote:

However, for the eldar, each wound taken represents a substantial drop in firepower.

It represents 27 points of firepower, hardly substantial. It might seem substantial from the chaos player's perspective, but for the eldar, they have 20+ bikes in many competitive lists. Losing 1 or 2 is 5-10% of scatbike firepower. It's not a big deal considering how quickly the scat bikes earn their points back (1-2 rounds of firing against the majority of armies unless 2+ spam. Sometimes even then). Compared to the marines, sure, it's 10 points more. Still, hardly game breaking...you invested so many points for so little return after all.

To neuter scat bikes, you must wipe them before turn 2. That's a real struggle for chaos, if not impossible. I have other armies that can do it (Tau, Marines. Necrons can make them need 3-4 turns to earn their points back) but chaos is not one of them.

nareik wrote:

On top of this, the first scat bike squad is essentially a throw away round of shooting; it destroys the rhino, but accomplishes little else... it might not even do that with cover/smokes and night fighting, which means another unit of scat bikes shooting wasted on a rhino.

At no point should a scat bike fire at the rhino unless they have to. Eldar have much better units for that if they need to, but if it makes you feel better, that's fine.
2/3 hit, 1/3 glance, 2/3 go through cover, 4/27 per shot glancing/pen hits. Nearly every scat bike causes a glance with cover, there should never be a point where more than one squad needs to fire on the rhino barring horrible dice.
It's easy to have one 5 man squad kill the rhino, and another fire at the troops wiping them in half. You kill 3 bikes, next turn the squad is wiped. 80 points to 275, advantage eldar. If you fire first, it becomes a bit better (6 bikes die, making it 160 to 275) but that's optimal and still not winning.

nareik wrote:

That said, jetbikes might initially seem good targets for sonic weapons, but jet bikes do play against some of the strengths of noise marines. Most obviously, they are bikes so can't be pinned, which is one of the ways noise marine armies a) control the damage they take and b) get their non-grenade wielding combat specialists into combat striking at initiative order.

Scat bikes are actually one of the best targets for noise marines. They are expensive per model, rely on cover saves, and big enough that a scatter should still get 1-2 models. WG are better because they cost more per model, but its hard to think of a better target.
It's just chaos is so overpriced that they come up short. Really short. It's a sound strategy, the codex just actively works against you here.

I play both armies, chaos was my second army after eldar. I've owned both since 3rd and have played them extensively. Chaos is in a horrible place and can't compete with eldar power lists currently. It's why you never ever see battlereports of eldar vs chaos where the eldar lose in this edition. It'll never be against anything resembling a competitive force (Dragons, Hawks, Spiders, WG, Bikes, WK for the record...everyone knows what's strong with the eldar at this point). I spam noise marines because they are one of the better options in the chaos dex, but they can't compete with the top players. Compare a squad of noise marines to a Riptide. It's roughly equivalent points. Guess which one is superior in nearly everyway?

nareik wrote:

On top of that scatbikes are simply more points efficient at grinding down units, as shown by the poster above above.

Right, which is why there is nothing the chaos codex does that counters this one unit. Throw the rest of the army in and it gets worse.

Scatbikes would be fair with 4+ armor.

I think they need less guns per bike tbh. It's rare to see a unit that can take such a powerful weapon with every model, and usually they pay a massive premium for it, and for a worse weapon.

If they were 1 in 3 or in 4, it'd be fair. Still strong, but not "All other troops are garbage lol" like they are now.

I'm not arguing about a jetbikes versatility, nor would I play a battle of pure noise marine blastmasters against an army of pure scatterbikes thats just plain suicide. Rather Im arguing as a heavy artillary role which serves to support front line infantry, blastmasters do a particularly good job at killing jinking bikes or models with a particularly good armour and cover save that other armies struggle with. A unit on its own is no measure of its strength, its like comparing a farseer to a sorcerer without knowing what unit they are attatched to, its pointless, similarly in comparing infantry artillary to jetbikes, they are largely differant roles. However you can argue a units strengths purely from a points/stats perspective, and ignoring almost every save bar a invuln save is a pretty powerful tool to use in an army.

Saying a unit is bad because this unit is better completely ignores other aspects in the game that make it competative

Reavas wrote:
I'm not arguing about a jetbikes versatility, nor would I play a battle of pure noise marine blastmasters against an army of pure scatterbikes thats just plain suicide.

Agreed, it is suicide.
The issue is that the chaos army fails to bring anything else that is strong. They really lack options.
The eldar army have a WK, WG, Spiders, and others that are still really difficult to handle for chaos.

Reavas wrote:

Rather Im arguing as a heavy artillary role which serves to support front line infantry, blastmasters do a particularly good job at killing jinking bikes or models with a particularly good armour and cover save that other armies struggle with.

Sure, I'll agree with that. Out of everything in the chaos dex, they serve that role the best.
However, other armies don't struggle with this. My marine and tau army will wipe the bikes turn 1 or 2, not turn 4. And they will suffer few casualties in return.
My necrons don't care about the bikes and will hit melee by turn 2-3. My Wolves care but have enough cheap 2w FnP bodies to get through the firepower and destroy in melee (wulfen).

The only armies that struggle with this are the bad armies. It's why you'll see scatbikes used alone to determine if an army is remotely competitive. Dealing with them is the bar, and chaos don't rise above it sadly. This makes noise marines, and really all of chaos, not competitive.

Reavas wrote:

A unit on its own is no measure of its strength, its like comparing a farseer to a sorcerer without knowing what unit they are attatched to, its pointless, similarly in comparing infantry artillary to jetbikes, they are largely differant roles. However you can argue a units strengths purely from a points/stats perspective, and ignoring almost every save bar a invuln save is a pretty powerful tool to use in an army.

That's moving the goalposts quite a ways and is an awful argument. Few units in the game have synergy, and for most armies its transports, formations, or HQ. Tau are an exception, as are necrons.

Originally it was noise marines can handle scat bikes quite readily. The math argues against this. Now you argue synergy, but chaos has little if any synergy. Very few of their powers buff units after all, and nearly none buff noise marines. You can take an icon for FNP, but that rises the cost of the unit even higher and the icon could get killed causing the bonus to disappear. What else can buff the noise marines? They must have a target to contribute, and if you argue its bikes, but they fail against bikes, then the argument becomes what is their point against an eldar force?

Eldar, on the other hand, buff units quite well. Fortune with an invul save on the bikes and the blast masters go from 3 kills a turn to 1, completely neutering them. The same can't be said for the reverse. The best armies have amazing synergy, Chaos doesn't.

Look at a centstar. With a 2+ save, a teleporting centstar can cripple a chaos army by itself, let alone the rest of the army. A wraith wing in decurion or riptide formation go through chaos like its nothing. No unit, formation, or anything else chaos has stands a chance against this. Show me a Bat Rep against a competitive marine, tau, or eldar force and I'll believe it. I've been asking for one for quite some time now, and no one has provided one.

Evidently, a single helldrake is going to fix your scatterbike problems. At least, that's what Jancoran has in his list. Unless I missed something.

Martel732 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
I was right about how negative you would be.

That's not an epic prediction, really.

Addendum: you never have told me what's "good" in the BA codex.

I kind of ...did?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Scatbikes would be fair with 4+ armor.

agreed. Im not sure why they made them so good compared to say Dark Eldar bikes with 5+ armor. That puzzles me but..meh.

No, you really didn't. Certainly not since the latest hard-to-use book dropped. It's fine. This thread is about CSM. But I still see a lot of parallels between BA and CSM. Both are have-not power armor armies.

There is no "choosing your tools wisely" when you've got nothing in your entire codex that threatens Eldar or Tau.

Martel732 wrote:
Evidently, a single helldrake is going to fix your scatterbike problems. At least, that's what Jancoran has in his list. Unless I missed something.

I'm pretty sure I didn't say that. Also: Most people take more than one. I just happen not to. Not enough points, given my strategy. But I handle the jetbikes in a different way and the Heldrake is supplemental to that. Its a REALLY good supplement though. It bakes a unit per round and often kills two to three of those units before it dies. It's awfully effective at its job with even just one of them up there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
No, you really didn't. Certainly not since the latest hard-to-use book dropped. It's fine. This thread is about CSM. But I still see a lot of parallels between BA and CSM. Both are have-not power armor armies.

There is no "choosing your tools wisely" when you've got nothing in your entire codex that threatens Eldar or Tau.

oh dear... I know that if I respond...nah... nah. Let's talk Chaos Marines here.

Well there are certainly BA tactic threads where you could explain what we need to be doing other than dying like chumps to dozens of S6 shots and S8 AP2 ignore cover interceptor pie plates.

Your slaneesh marines or whatever aren't looking so useful when the Riptide just evaporates them all from across the board.

I don't see how anything from the recent CSM book, like the BA book, fixes the problem of losing 33%-50% of your list per turn. Because Tau and Eldar say so. Your tools aren't helping you much when they are back in your model carrier.

Martel732 wrote:
Well there are certainly BA tactic threads where you could explain what we need to be doing other than dying like chumps to dozens of S6 shots and S8 AP2 ignore cover interceptor pie plates.

Your slaneesh marines or whatever aren't looking so useful when the Riptide just evaporates them all from across the board.

You forgot he did math wrong earlier and claims he works with math at his job.

Martel732 wrote:
Well there are certainly BA tactic threads where you could explain what we need to be doing other than dying like chumps to dozens of S6 shots and S8 AP2 ignore cover interceptor pie plates.

Your slaneesh marines or whatever aren't looking so useful when the Riptide just evaporates them all from across the board.

I don't see how anything from the recent CSM book, like the BA book, fixes the problem of losing 33%-50% of your list per turn. Because Tau and Eldar say so. Your tools aren't helping you much when they are back in your model carrier.

So it is your opinion that I will allow the riptide to do this to me? its your opinion that the Traitors Hate book gave me nothing good to deal with that possibility?
Umm...

So you heard me when I said I play Night Lords right?

Akiasura wrote:

Reavas wrote:
I'm not arguing about a jetbikes versatility, nor would I play a battle of pure noise marine blastmasters against an army of pure scatterbikes thats just plain suicide.

Agreed, it is suicide.
The issue is that the chaos army fails to bring anything else that is strong. They really lack options.
The eldar army have a WK, WG, Spiders, and others that are still really difficult to handle for chaos.

Reavas wrote:

Rather Im arguing as a heavy artillary role which serves to support front line infantry, blastmasters do a particularly good job at killing jinking bikes or models with a particularly good armour and cover save that other armies struggle with.

Sure, I'll agree with that. Out of everything in the chaos dex, they serve that role the best.
However, other armies don't struggle with this. My marine and tau army will wipe the bikes turn 1 or 2, not turn 4. And they will suffer few casualties in return.
My necrons don't care about the bikes and will hit melee by turn 2-3. My Wolves care but have enough cheap 2w FnP bodies to get through the firepower and destroy in melee (wulfen).

The only armies that struggle with this are the bad armies. It's why you'll see scatbikes used alone to determine if an army is remotely competitive. Dealing with them is the bar, and chaos don't rise above it sadly. This makes noise marines, and really all of chaos, not competitive.

Reavas wrote:

A unit on its own is no measure of its strength, its like comparing a farseer to a sorcerer without knowing what unit they are attatched to, its pointless, similarly in comparing infantry artillary to jetbikes, they are largely differant roles. However you can argue a units strengths purely from a points/stats perspective, and ignoring almost every save bar a invuln save is a pretty powerful tool to use in an army.

That's moving the goalposts quite a ways and is an awful argument. Few units in the game have synergy, and for most armies its transports, formations, or HQ. Tau are an exception, as are necrons.

Originally it was noise marines can handle scat bikes quite readily. The math argues against this. Now you argue synergy, but chaos has little if any synergy. Very few of their powers buff units after all, and nearly none buff noise marines. You can take an icon for FNP, but that rises the cost of the unit even higher and the icon could get killed causing the bonus to disappear. What else can buff the noise marines? They must have a target to contribute, and if you argue its bikes, but they fail against bikes, then the argument becomes what is their point against an eldar force?

Eldar, on the other hand, buff units quite well. Fortune with an invul save on the bikes and the blast masters go from 3 kills a turn to 1, completely neutering them. The same can't be said for the reverse. The best armies have amazing synergy, Chaos doesn't.

Look at a centstar. With a 2+ save, a teleporting centstar can cripple a chaos army by itself, let alone the rest of the army. A wraith wing in decurion or riptide formation go through chaos like its nothing. No unit, formation, or anything else chaos has stands a chance against this. Show me a Bat Rep against a competitive marine, tau, or eldar force and I'll believe it. I've been asking for one for quite some time now, and no one has provided one.

In oder to explore the synergies in the chais dex/suppliments Im going to have to go into what I often pack, which Im happy to do for the sake of argument.

One of my favourite things to pack is a minimum of 4 units of CC cultists with flamers and run them towards the enemy, with the new lost and the damned formation this is great as fearless makes some of the units a great tarpit and having them respawn on the board edges is great for taking out many low toughness units (Ive been very lucky and have had them even take out several units of CSM) this synergises with the blastmasters as 50 points of cultists can prove rather troublesome if you leave them to their buisness, even worse is if you target them as a priority, leaving the blastmasters to put large dents in the enemies units while the cultists run amok. They also give my chaos spawn a 5+ cover save which is always nice.

Other than useful distractor units like cultists one of my favourite things to ally in is a forgehost, although not innately CSM its damn better than a defiler, and they brutalise even wraith units and the instant death on most units is amazing! The Grinders become top priority targets that allow for the noise marines to, again, do their job from the other end of the board.

Sorcerers are also always a welcome synergy, roll on ectomancy if you want to shoot those blastmasters without tbe need for LOS, cant hide from them anymore but personally I roll on heritech for the soul grinders but the potential for synergy is there.

Blastmasters are meant to serve as an auxillary and thats how I play them, all of what I mentioned above is what I pack in 1350 point games and I have tabled opponents on multiple occasions, opponents such as necrons, tau, and space marines (eldar I got close but no dice).

In reguards to pitting single units against single units I dont think its fair to pit an auxillary that is used to eliminate specific threats such as scatterbikes and a unit that as you said, can make up the bulk of an eldar army. If you would like me to point out some more synergies that are indide the actual chaos codex and supplimemts, as I know several people will rip me a new one for the forgehost not being in the dex but being a synergy I use, I will do so after class (which Im attending now) because there are some great synergies with certain formations.

On a side note: how the feth did your necrons get in CC with scatterbikes??? I mean, scarabs maybe but what else possibly could catch those things?

wraiths are beasts so i mean they move real fast and with 4+ fnp... Well...

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Well there are certainly BA tactic threads where you could explain what we need to be doing other than dying like chumps to dozens of S6 shots and S8 AP2 ignore cover interceptor pie plates.

Your slaneesh marines or whatever aren't looking so useful when the Riptide just evaporates them all from across the board.

I don't see how anything from the recent CSM book, like the BA book, fixes the problem of losing 33%-50% of your list per turn. Because Tau and Eldar say so. Your tools aren't helping you much when they are back in your model carrier.

So it is your opinion that I will allow the riptide to do this to me? its your opinion that the Traitors Hate book gave me nothing good to deal with that possibility?
Umm...

So you heard me when I said I play Night Lords right?

I'm not familiar, because most people quit playing CSM where I play. So what do the Night Lords do that's so special?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Well there are certainly BA tactic threads where you could explain what we need to be doing other than dying like chumps to dozens of S6 shots and S8 AP2 ignore cover interceptor pie plates.

Your slaneesh marines or whatever aren't looking so useful when the Riptide just evaporates them all from across the board.

You forgot he did math wrong earlier and claims he works with math at his job.

Slayer-Fan123, do you know how to win with Chaos Marines or not? Simple yes or no. Do you or don't you?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Well there are certainly BA tactic threads where you could explain what we need to be doing other than dying like chumps to dozens of S6 shots and S8 AP2 ignore cover interceptor pie plates.

Your slaneesh marines or whatever aren't looking so useful when the Riptide just evaporates them all from across the board.

I don't see how anything from the recent CSM book, like the BA book, fixes the problem of losing 33%-50% of your list per turn. Because Tau and Eldar say so. Your tools aren't helping you much when they are back in your model carrier.

So it is your opinion that I will allow the riptide to do this to me? its your opinion that the Traitors Hate book gave me nothing good to deal with that possibility?
Umm...

So you heard me when I said I play Night Lords right?

I'm not familiar, because most people quit playing CSM where I play. So what do the Night Lords do that's so special?

Its not what they do thats special. its their reliance on Raptors. The Night Lords are kinda the masters of using Raptors. And you have said quite wrongly that they will just line up and shoot me. But they wont. Because Traitors Hate now allowsme to drop in and charge...immediately. So i can shut those Riptides up and start smashing them with the Chaos Lord and his doughty minions with their grenades or poweraxes after we shoot them with our meltas.

Overwatch? Thats why we have the Dirge Casters. The more Riptides there are, the less of everything else there is in that Tau force. A Riptide Wing which I have faced with as many as FIVE of those things in an army means there's almost nothing else!

Now Riptides aren't helpless in close combat. But they sure aren't going to do anything approaching their potential for damage if they are doing the tango with me. We exude -2 LD if two units pile in together. So if we win by 1, we actually win by 3. Pretty cool.

Now we both know that all kinds of things can go wrong. deep striking mishaps, float too far off course, charge distances impeded and so on. We know that all is true. But to tell me Traitors Hate did nothing for me is just blind. It did. And there is goingto be a Riptide Wing loving Tau player out there real soon whose going to find that out.

This ignores the Mutilators and Obliterators I can bring to the party as well. and i do bring them to the party.

So its a different solution that is helped by Traitors Hate which you said emphatically "did nothing" to help withthe problem.

Same thing happens to the Scatter bikes. jump in , assault. Silenced. Here again: too many variables to insure success, but then thats true for both of us.

So to answer your question, my Night Lords got considerably better thanks to the Raptor Talon Formation...which i mentioned in my very first post here.

I am enjoying the impact of Traitors hate. So should you.

Your interceptor casualties are going to be huge. And Riptides don't give a feth about melta. Been there, done that. But maybe this will help. The BA assault from deepstrike formations don't seem to, though. I guess there's a difference in that assault terminators and sanguinary guard are both expensive and poor units.